The State of B2B Tech in LA in 2018

News - January 23rd, 2018

Don’t let the bright lights of Hollywood blind you from noticing Los Angeles’ rising star — its tech scene. The luxurious Tinseltown lifestyle used to be LA’s biggest attraction. Fifteen years ago, the city didn’t even have the slightest semblance of a tech scene — that would have distracted from the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, of course.
According to Variety, downtown LA had been on the decline up until about 10 years ago. Minus the large corporations that set up shop in skyscrapers, LA was a ghost town. The opening of the Staples Center in 1999 slowly began to breathe live into the economy, and the expansion of the LA Metro Rail system in 2009 stoked the flames, leading to a revival of the city’s previous enthusiasm.
And now, tech companies are jumping onboard.
Silicon Valley is losing talent due to its “exorbitant cost of living and a yawning income gap brought on by fast-growing tech companies competing for highly skilled employees,” Marisa Kendall wrote for the Mercury News.
LA is seeing so much traction that it has been ranked third as a leading entrepreneurial hub since 2015. In fact, while Northern California’s venture capital decreased between 2014 and 2015, LA’s rose by 50 percent. The city of angels is now home to nearly 900 startups and close to 70,000 engineers, giving the LA talent pool a reason to stick around.
Part of the reason LA’s tech scene is exploding might be because it has found a niche in combining its new status as a tech hub with its more established status as the center of the entertainment world. As Silivia Li Sam of Startup Grind wrote, “With local leaders like Snapchat and Hulu, Los Angeles is taking over your smartphone screen and TV entertainment.” Even celebrities such as Kobe Bryant are starting to invest in LA’s tech scene, according to BuiltIn LA’s Ola Danilina.